Evolution of current-carrying string networks

TL;DR

This paper presents large-scale field theory simulations of current-carrying cosmic string networks, revealing their evolution, scaling behaviors, and physical properties during different cosmic eras, with implications for their observational signatures.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical measurements of coherence lengths and condensate equations of state for current-carrying string networks, highlighting their evolution in radiation and matter eras.

Findings

Different scaling behaviors in radiation and matter eras.

First measurements of charge and current coherence lengths.

Condensate equation of state depends mainly on expansion rate.

Abstract

Cosmic string networks are expected to form in early Universe phase transitions via the Kibble mechanism and are unavoidable in several Beyond the Standard Model theories. While most predictions of observational signals of string networks assume featureless Abelian-Higgs or Nambu-Goto string networks, in many such extensions the networks can carry additional degrees of freedom, including charges and currents; these are often generically known as superconducting strings. All such degrees of freedom can impact the evolution of the networks and therefore their observational signatures. We report on the results of $2048^3$ field theory simulations of the evolution of a current-carrying network of strings, highlighting the different scaling behaviours of the network in the radiation and matter eras. We also report the first numerical measurements of the coherence length scales for the charge and current and of the condensate equation of state, and show that the latter mainly depends on the expansion rate, with chirality occurring for the matter era. Qualitatively, the fact that the matter era is the optimal expansion rate for these networks to reach scaling is in agreement with recent analytic modeling.